Hannah Sevian

Hannah Sevian
Massachusetts Bay Community College | Massbay · STEM Division

PhD, physical chemistry

About

65
Publications
22,384
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Introduction
Hannah Sevian is an Associate Provost and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts Boston who works with students, faculty, and staff to advance the educational mission and research prominence of Boston’s singular public university. Her work builds from deep theoretical and practical study of learning and teaching in diverse educational spaces and of intersections of race and gender in how faculty contribute scholarship and teaching. Her current research includes the invention of an asset-based supplemental course model at the university as a cultural wealth-based alternative to remediation for students who are at risk of DFW in gateway STEM learning. Her research team is illuminating how students experience success in STEM pathways and how advisors and care structures best support students in their success.

Publications

Publications (65)
Article
Full-text available
Undergraduate first-semester general chemistry (GC1) functions as a gatekeeper to STEM degrees, asymmetrically impacting students who are nonwhite, from lower socioeconomic groups, non-native English speakers, two-year college transfers, and first-generation in college. Nationally, just under 30% of students earn grades of D, F, or withdraw (termed...
Article
Dilemmas are inherent to the teaching profession and can be characterized as conceptual, pedagogical, cultural, or political. To analyze these dilemmas as growth points for teacher development, this multiple-case study explores the activity-theoretical conceptualization of contradictions as sources of change. Data were analyzed from seven diverse t...
Article
Productive problem solving, concept construction, and sense making occur through the core process of abstraction. Although the capacity for domain-general abstraction is developed at a young age, the role of abstraction in increasingly complex and disciplinary environments, such as those encountered in undergraduate STEM education, is not well unde...
Article
Learning and learning goals in undergraduate chemistry laboratory have been a popular research topic for the past three decades due to calls for curriculum reform, cost justification, and overall efficacy of necessary skill development. While much work has been done to assess curricular interventions on students’ learning and attitudes towards lab,...
Article
Full-text available
Teachers face challenges when building the concept of substance with students because tensions of meanings emerge from students’ daily life and canonical ideas developed in classrooms. A powerful tool to address learning, pedagogical, and research challenges is the conceptual profile theory. According to this theory, people employ various ways of c...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Much research on abstraction in learning has focused on domain-general abstraction as a developmental capacity or as a process of knowledge construction. However, this does not capture abstraction that happens in-the-moment as students make sense of novel phenomena and problem contexts. We operationalize abstraction in-the-moment as the extent to w...
Article
Full-text available
Teachers' use of formative assessment (FA) has been shown to improve student outcomes; however, teachers enact FA in many ways. We examined classroom videos of nine experienced teachers of elementary, middle, and high school science, aiming to create a model of FA enactment that is useful to teachers. We developed a coding scheme through a validati...
Chapter
Formative assessment can facilitate teachers’ abilities to elicit and notice the disciplinary substance of students’ thinking and to respond based on this. Following a design-based process, we developed principled practical knowledge to create resources that might guide experienced teachers in examining their formative assessment practice and provi...
Article
When characterizing students’ item-solving strategies, methods such as interviews and think-aloud protocols are often used. However, these measures provide limited information about sub- or preconscious signals and cognitive processes that also affect students’ item-solving strategies and abilities. A growing number of researchers in chemical educa...
Article
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The solving of problems in biochemistry often uses concepts from multiple disciplines such as chemistry and biology. Chemical identity (CI) is a foundational concept in the field of chemistry, and the knowledge, thinking, and practices associated with CI are used to answer the following questions: "What is this substance?" and "How is it different...
Article
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In this article, we draw upon the Conceptual Profile Theory to discuss the negotiation of meanings related to the energy concept in an 11th grade physics classroom. This theory is based on the heterogeneity of verbal thinking, that is, on the idea that any individual or society does not represent concepts in a single way. According to this perspect...
Article
Problem solving is lauded as beneficial, but students do not all learn well by solving problems. Using the resources framework, Tuminaro and Redish (2007) suggested that, for physics students, this puzzle may be partially understood by paying attention to underlying epistemological assumptions that constrain the approaches students take to solving...
Article
Context-based learning (CBL) is advocated as beneficial to learners, but more needs to be understood about how different contexts used in courses influence student outcomes. Gilbert defined several models of context that appear to be used in chemistry. In one model that achieves many criteria of student meaning-making, the context is provided by ‘p...
Article
Context-based learning (CBL) has influenced teaching and learning science in many countries over the past decades. Twelve years ago, a special issue on CBL was published in this Journal, focusing on CBL curriculum development. Seven papers in this current special issue on CBL now address the question of how a context influences the learning process...
Article
If an organic chemistry student explains that she represents a mechanistic step because “it’s a productive part of the mechanism,” what meaning could the professor teaching the class attribute to this statement, what is actually communicated, and what does it mean for the student? The professor might think that the explanation is based on knowledge...
Article
Chemical identity, the idea that every substance has at least one property that makes it unique and able to be differentiated from other substances, is core to the practice of chemistry. Such practice requires using properties to classify as well as to differentiate. Learning which substance properties are productive in chemical identity thinking i...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We present preliminary analysis of chemistry graduate students' and secondary chemistry teachers' assumptions about mechanisms of chemical phenomena, around a set of threshold concepts. Chemistry education literature largely identifies pre-threshold assumptions as naive/alternative conceptions not particularly useful in understanding chemical pheno...
Article
Students often struggle with solving mechanism problems in organic chemistry courses. They frequently focus on surface features, have difficulty attributing meaning to symbols, and do not recognize tasks that are different from the exact tasks practiced. To be more successful, students need to be able to extract salient features, map similarities t...
Article
Full-text available
Students often face difficulties when presented with chemical structures and asked to relate them to properties of those substances. Learning to relate structures to properties, both in predicting properties based on chemical structures and interpreting properties to infer structure, is pivotal in students' education in chemistry. This troublesome...
Article
Making decisions about the production and use of chemical substances is of central importance in many fields. In this study, a research team comprising teachers and educational researchers collaborated in collecting and analyzing cognitive interviews with students from 8th grade through first-year university general chemistry in an effort to map pr...
Article
A perspective is presented on how the representation mapping framework by Hahn and Chater (1998) may be used to characterize reasoning during problem solving in chemistry. To provide examples for testing the framework, an exploratory study was conducted with students and professors from three different courses in the middle of the undergraduate che...
Article
Full-text available
In continuation from a previous paper, in which the concept of chemical identity was introduced, the elements that were used to collect and analyze cognitive interviews are presented, along with the results, implications and conclusions of a cultural-comparison study between students from a university in Costa Rica and another in the United States....
Article
Full-text available
The ability to evaluate options and make informed decisions about problems in relevant contexts is a core competency in science education that requires the use of both domain-general and discipline-specific knowledge and reasoning strategies. In this study we investigated the implicit assumptions and modes of reasoning applied by individuals with d...
Article
Full-text available
The value of the concept of substance, both in its theoretical and phenomenological constructions, should be considered in the learning of chemistry. The central idea of chemical identity is defined to consist of the assumptions, knowledge and practices of chemists in determining whether substances are the same or not the same. Within a collaborati...
Article
Full-text available
El valor del concepto de sustancia, tanto como construcción teórica y fenomenológica como macroscópica, debe ser considerado en el aprendizaje de la química. Este trabajo define una idea principal en química – identidad química – que consiste en las sugerencias, conocimientos, y prácticas de trabajo de los químicos para saber si las sustancias quím...
Article
Full-text available
The value of the concept of substance, both in its theoretical and phenomenological constructions, should be considered in the learning of chemistry. The central idea of chemical identity is defined to consist of the assumptions, knowledge and practices of chemists in determining whether substances are the same or not the same. Within a collaborati...
Article
In continuation from a previous paper, in which the concept of chemical identity was introduced, the elements that were used to collect and analyze cognitive interviews are presented, along with the results, implications and conclusions of a cultural-comparison study between students from a university in Costa Rica and another in the United States....
Article
Chemistry presents a unique position among the sciences as an area of study in which students have opportunities to consider consequences of actions with personal and societal ramifications, both in the present and for the future. In particular, chemistry education can offer students opportunities to practice using chemical knowledge to evaluate be...
Article
Students’ mental models of diffusion in a gas phase solution were studied through the use of the Structure and Motion of Matter (SAMM) survey. This survey permits identification of categories of ways students think about the structure of the gaseous solute and solvent, the origin of motion of gas particles, and trajectories of solute particles in t...
Article
Given the diversity of materials in our surroundings, one should expect scientifically literate citizens to have a basic understanding of the core ideas and practices used to analyze chemical substances. In this article, we use the term ‘chemical identity' to encapsulate the assumptions, knowledge, and practices upon which chemical analysis relies....
Article
Professional development that bridges gaps between educational research and practice is needed. However, bridging gaps can be difficult because teachers and educational researchers often belong to different Communities of Practice, as their activities, goals, and means of achieving those goals often differ. Meaningful collaboration among teachers a...
Article
Dominant educational approaches in chemistry focus on the learning of somewhat isolated concepts and ideas about chemical substances and reactions. Reform efforts often seek to engage students in the generation of knowledge through the investigation of chemical phenomena, with emphasis on the development and application of models to build causal ex...
Chapter
Full-text available
Research in science education is concerned with studying and describing how student learning develops over time toward building understanding of core 'big ideas.' This paper offers perspectives on how the development of coherent conceptual understanding in chemistry may be approached. Following an overview of what 'learning progressions' are, the f...
Article
Science education frameworks and standards play a central role in the development of curricula and assessments, as well as in guiding teaching practices in grades K–12. Recently, the National Research Council published a new Framework for K–12 Science Education that has guided the development of the Next Generation Science Standards. In this paper,...
Chapter
The particle nature of matter (PNM) is extremely important to the disciplines of science and central to school science curricula, serving as building block for learning and as a threshold concept providing a portal to understanding other fundamental topics. It has also been identified as a core idea in the science content standards of many countrie...
Chapter
In this concluding chapter, we review the contents of this volume, starting from the end topic, history and philosophy of science. Our purpose is to emphasize the features, qualities, and strengths of the works presented and to highlight areas of convergence and of potential dissonance that might bring to light compelling questions for future study...
Article
This chapter presents one iteration in the refinement, or validation, of a learning progression of the structure of matter. The initial, hypothetical particulate nature of matter learning progression described likely pathways in the development of learners’ implicit assumptions, which are presuppositions about the nature of entities that guide and...
Article
Full-text available
Much of the research on implementation of novel curriculum, instruction, and assessment in undergraduate science laboratory courses in the U.S. has been funded by public funding agencies. A review and analysis was conducted of awards made between 2000 and 2008 from the National Science Foundation that have focused on laboratory learning in undergra...
Article
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One of the most important thinking processes relied upon by chemists is weighing the benefits, costs and risks (BCR) in chemical product design. Preparing students to be chemists who are equipped to work in modern chemistry requires educating students to reason strategically about BCR. The development of learning progressions in this area could hel...
Article
Development of learning progressions has been at the forefront of science education for several years. While understanding students’ conceptual development toward “big ideas” in science is extremely valuable for researchers, science teachers can also benefit from assessment tools that diagnose their students’ trajectories along the learning progres...
Article
This article explores aspects of science and mathematics faculty identities and biographies that mediated their involvement in K-12 service. Faculty expressed five motivations for participating in K-12 service—advancing their research agenda, advocating environmental consciousness, desiring to be involved in their children’s schools, aspiring to im...
Article
Full-text available
Schoolteachers and higher-education faculty can benefit one another to improve teaching and student learning.
Conference Paper
Background/Question/Methods Undergraduate education is central to the National Science Foundation's mission in human resource development. The Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) serves as the focal point for agency-wide support for undergraduate education. NSF's CCLI (now TUES) and ATE programs at 4-year and 2-year higher education institut...
Article
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The present article presents a rubric we developed for assessing the quality of scientific explanations by science graduate students. The rubric was developed from a qualitative analysis of science graduate students’ abilities to explain their own research to an audience of non‐scientists. Our intention is that use of the rubric to characterise exp...
Article
Full-text available
We present an alternative to a traditional first-year chemistry laboratory experiment. This experiment has four key features: students utilize stoichiometry, learn and apply principles of green chemistry, engage in authentic scientific inquiry, and discover why each part of a scientific lab report is necessary. The importance and essential qualitie...
Article
Laboratory experiments on light-emitting thin organic films can give students the opportunity to learn about electrochemistry, spectroscopy, the microscopic structure of the solid state, and basic circuits. In such experiments, students make light-emitting devices by spin coating a thin film containing ruthenium(II) complex ions onto a glass slide....
Article
Predictions of macroscopic and microscopic thermodynamic properties of a polymer blend using the Born–Green–Yvon (BGY) integral equation treatment of a compressible polymer mixture on a lattice are compared to recent simulations of compressible symmetric binary mixtures on a lattice. The theory is consistent with recent simulation studies which ind...
Article
The absorption spectrum of an optical transition of a dilute solute in a glassy or liquid solvent is usually inhomogeneously broadened. In a concentrated solution, the question arises as to whether or not the transition energy distributions of nearby solutes are correlated. Such correlation has important implications for coherent or incoherent tran...
Article
We present a molecular theory of the energy distributions for the internal quantum states of a solute in a liquid or glassy solvent. We show that the energy distributions for different states are correlated in a way that depends on the solute-solvent interactions. We show how the theory can be modified easily to describe the transition-energy distr...
Chapter
The time constants T 1 and T 2 were introduced many years ago to describe relaxation in nuclear magnetic resonance.1,2 To be explicit, let us consider a collection of spin 1/2 particles in a static magnetic field in the z: direction. Each of the spins can of course be found in either of two quantum states, up or down. In thermal equilibrium, this p...
Article
We consider the relaxation dynamics of a spin-1/2 particle in a fluctuating transverse magnetic field. With a cumulant expansion technique (up to sixth order) we calculate the time dependence of the approach to equilibrium of the population difference of the two spin levels and of the phase coherence. We find that for intermediate strength coupling...
Article
We consider a quantum–mechanical two‐level system under the influence of both diagonal and off‐diagonal stochastic perturbations, and focus on the decay times T1 and T2, which refer to the relaxation to equilibrium of the populations and relative phase of the two levels, respectively. From both theoretical and experimental viewpoints one traditiona...
Article
Notes for the Instructor The time that students require to carry out the device fabrication depends largely on advance preparation done by the Instructor. The timeframe can be shortened, for example, if the Instructor prepares the solutions ahead of time. Approximate timeframe for device fabrication procedure as written: two to three 50-minute lab...
Article
Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1992. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-129).

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